Suspected fraudster and architect of several bank frauds in Lagos State, Ajisafe Olugbenga, 47, has been arrested by the operatives of Rapid Response Squad of the Lagos State Police Command.

Ajisafe, an ex-banker, who is popularly known as Harrison among his gang, was arrested after he was mentioned as the initiator of sims swap deal at a network provider’s outlet in Surulere, Lagos, and Abeokuta, Ogun State.

Before his arrest on Tuesday, he was on the run over his involvement in a N2 million fraud in one of the old generation banks in Lagos sometime in April, 2016.

The suspect, who is regarded as the chief distributor of roles in all the bank frauds, was alleged to have a vast network with insiders in the banks. He used insiders in the banks to procure bank details of high net worth customers. It is this information such as account balance, account number and phone number of the owner and e-mail that the gang work on to perpetrate the fraud. His gang blocks or swaps the sim of the bank customer so that he or she does not receive the transaction on the account, which were mostly perpetrated on a weekend when the money were withdrawn in tranches. Before this, the bank insider, who has his or her cut on every transaction, would have helped the gang to increase the customer’s withdrawal limit.

When the suspected fraudsters were arrested, several print outs of customers details were found with group. It was further revealed that the balances on all the print outs was over N800 million. Those arrested for prosecution in that case included Michael Adeoye, Ayo Olalekan, Israel Ochenehi, Adegbenro Opeyemi, Obong Udeme-Obot and Peter Ezurike.

Ajisafe latest offence was the recruitment of three suspects through which some sim cards belonging to a particular network were being swapped and used for some of the gangs’ bank fraud. Two of the suspects recruited for the sim swap; Shamsudeen Olalekan, 35 and Nicholas Egbele, were arrested few days before Ajisafe was picked up on Tuesday.

Also arrested with them was a staff of a popular network provider in an outlet in Abeokuta who has been assisting the gang in sim swapping while another collaborator is said to be on the run. Olalekan and Egbede disclosed that they were promised N20,000 for every sim card swapped for the gang. and Ajisafe upon supplying him their passport photographs, procured national ID cards with names of bank’s account holder. This is to be accompanied with sworn affidavit on loss of sim card.

Several details of bank customers sent via sms to Ajisafe’s line by some people believed to be banks’ insiders have been retrieved from his phone. The four suspects have been transferred to the SCID, Panti for further investigations.